Author: Patrick Johnstone

Council Report – March 14, 2016

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

In my ever-strained effort to get a Council Report done before the subsequent council meeting, I am feeling pretty good about not having to use my entire two week break to get this one out.

Our Regular Meeting started with a presentation on the 2016-2020 Financial Plan. The draft plan looks at a 2.73% tax increase. We also had our official Opportunity for Public Comment on the budget.

Our accounting is complicated and regulated, and although it is completely transparent, it is not easy for most people to look at or understand. I have put together a couple of blog posts talking about how we compare to other Cities in how we collect and spend money, because I think that is a useful comparison. As much as we are “competing” with anyone in running a local government, I guess it is other local governments. However, that is not the whole story.

I am NOT an accountant, so I need to rely on our staff and our auditors to assure me that our budgeting is in compliance with PSAB standards, and our reporting to the Province meets the regulatory requirements. However, I am going to try in the next few weeks to put a few more blog posts together regarding the Financial plan, in hopes of making things more understandable about where your money is going.

Economic Health Care Cluster Branding,
One of the City’s economic development initiatives is leveraging growth that will come with the redevelopment of RCH, and aligning the Intelligent City Initiative and other local advantages to develop an Economic Health Care Cluster.

As is de rigueur for these types of economic development projects, the City needed to create a brand and identity to align our outreach and marketing efforts. I am not a branding expert, and frankly did not like the brand chosen when I first saw it, until it was explained to me and I was shown the application. Or maybe it was the beards.

If you don’t like it or understand it (see top banner), it is possible you are not the one being marketed to. This is not about selling the neighbourhood to the residents of the neighbourhood. It is about selling new businesses, not-for-profits, education and health care service providers, researchers and investors in the potential for a real economic interconnected science and innovation cluster. For that, I think it works.

New Zoning Bylaw: Initial Draft and Next Steps,
The City’s Zoning Bylaw is old (almost 75 years!) and unnecessarily complicated. This is because it has been edited almost constantly since it was first written, by different Councils, different staff, and for different reasons. New initiatives have been added to it at the whim of Council (like our Family Friendly Housing policy), edits to language made to solve immediate issues (like last year when we edited one land use provision to allow a Veterinary Clinic on 12th Street to add boarding for cats to their services), and old land uses that are no longer likely (broom manufacturing?) are mixed in with new land uses we would have never imagined when it was originally written (Vape Shops?).

For the last several years, Staff have been working on a new comprehensive re-write of the Bylaw. This is not about creating new rules or introducing new initiatives, it is about making what already exists internally consistent and easier to understand. The time is right for this, because we will be rolling out a new OCP (hopefully) by the end of the year, which will bring new policy and initiatives which will be much easier to introduce into a logically ordered and designed Bylaw than this old mess.

Update on Greenhouse Floor Space Ratio
Councillor Puchmayr raised a concern about the regulations around how large a greenhouse a person in the City can have. The issue with greenhouses larger than 100 square feet is that they invoke the building code (which is provincial), which increases the development cost of building greenhouses that size.

Bill M203 – Workers Compensation Amendment Act 2016
Council supported this bill to provide better support to first responders in how the Workers compensation Act addresses Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Strategic Initiatives
As part of our regular routine, Council is going to get an update report at the end of every month on progress of two or three of our Strategic Initiatives, so we know that progress is being made, we can ask any questions that might arise, and the public can be informed on what is going on.

This month’s update included the Front Street parkade upgrade, partial removal and Mews construction, which is coming along on time and budget. There have been a few concern raised by the local businesses, but for the most part things are moving smoothly as can be expected with an incredibly disruptive process. It is amazing to see the sun shining on the fronts of buildings along Front Street.

Also (perhaps) surprising is that traffic chaos has not occurred. There is a notable increase in “rat running” in the evenings especially, and increased enforcement to help manage that, but the large number of trucks that were expected by many to clog up Columbia and Royal have not appeared. We are doing vehicle counts, so staff will be able to report back to us on how the traffic fared with data, but in the meantime, the anecdotes support the Cheonggyecheon / Embarcadero / Harbour Drive model of traffic calming.

We also spoke about the Intelligent City Initiative, and progress on BridgeNet, where the City is putting dark fibre in the ground and securing deals with ISPs to lease that fibre to users in the City. The plan right now is to have something to sell by as early as this summer, and at that time to start hooking up more than 100 residential multi-family units and a few dozen strategic business locations to true 1Gbit internet service at process that should be competitive with what you are paying now to the Major Telecoms. More details to come here, watch this space!

The following items were moved on Consent by Council:

Roger’s Hometown Hockey Follow Up
I had a lot of fun at this event, and we cannot thank New West Minor Hockey enough for the help and energy they brought to the weekend. This did not cost the City much, thanks to volunteers, Rogers, and a generous list of corporate sponsors. The exposure of Queens Park and the Royals was good, lots of people got to meet Ron McLean and Cliff running and Kirk McLean, and fun was had by all. Also, a big thank you to our staff for making it appear to be a seamless operation!

1031 Sixth Avenue: Heritage Revitalization Agreement
This house in Moody Park is more than 100 years old, and presents a restoration challenge due to its level of deterioration and the housing needs of the land owner. Because of its age and potential heritage value, staff has been working closely with the homeowner to come up with a heritage preservation plan to accompany the building of a second home on the lot. We are pretty early in the process here, but signs are positive that an agreement can be reached.

Pattullo Bridge Replacement Project Revised MOU
With all the talk of the Massey Bridge and regional tolling, and following the failure of the Referendum that would have secured funding for the Pattullo replacement, we still have a bridge that needs to be dealt with. Negotiations between New Westminster, surrey and TransLink have been ongoing around the terms and details of the replacement plan. Through these negotiations, an MOU was developed that clarified for all three parties that the preferred [plan for the Pattullo is that which was laid out in the Mayor’s Vision for regional transportation: a 4-lane structure (that can be expanded to 6 lanes if all parties agree) with tolls to be build pretty much in the same location as the existing bridge.

There is much work to do yet, including finding the money, but at least we can start to plan around the agreed-upon terms. This does not mean the bridge upgrades happening this summer can be put aside. Even if everything fell perfectly into place today, the time needed for design, procurement, funding and environmental assessment means we wouldn’t likely see a shovel in the ground until 2018, and would not see a bridge put into service until 2022, so TransLink needs to eek a few more years of service out of the big orange arch.

Update on Anvil Centre 2016 Budget
We received an update report on the Anvil operations and budget. I don’t think anyone thought this major new facility was going to cost nothing to run, and the full revenue stream is not yet realized, but the costs are higher than I anticipated.

I’m cognizant that we need to look at the ROI on this operation – every time there is an event in the theatre, you cannot get a reservation at el Santo or the Hub, last summer during the Fan Fest we had literally thousands of people spilling out of the Anvil and using Columbia Street and the River Market spaces, supporting local businesses and raising the profile of Downtown New Westminster on the regional scale.

Ultimately, we will not realize the full value of this project until we lease the restaurant space, until the owners of the Office tower lease it out, and until the art programs reach a maturity that the location becomes the cultural hub that we expect it to become.

As I have said before, the measure of success for the anvil will happen in 10 years from now when it is a generator of community growth in the Arts in the same way the Canada Games Pool, Queens Park Arena, and Mercer Field (three facilities that also cost more for us to operate than they return in revenue) are generators of community growth in sports.

Special Occasion Permits – Salmonbellies
Our archaic and complex liquor laws require that we go through this process
every year so the Salmonbellies can sell beer at the League and Playoff games. Please watch lacrosse responsibly.

We then, as usual, wrapped the meeting by adopting a few Bylaws:

Housing Agreement (900 Carnarvon Street) Bylaw No. 7810, 2016
Given third reading last week, this agreement to make the 4th building at Plaza 88 a market rental building is now Adopted. It’s the law of the land.

HRA (235 Durham Street) Amendment Bylaw No. 7817, 2016
Given third reading last week, this agreement to extend the term for an HRA is now Adopted. It’s the law of the land.

Film Permit Bylaw No. 7793, 2016
Bylaw Notice Enforcement Amendment Bylaw No. 7814, 2016
Given third reading last week, these Bylaws regulate the Film industry in the City by codifying some existing policies and practices. Now adopted, it’s the law of the land. Please adjust your behavior accordingly.

Electrical Utility Amendment Bylaw No. 7816, 2016
The new electrical Rates bringing our rates in line with BC Hydro retail rates was given third reading last week, and is now Adopted.

And we are off for two weeks. Please enjoy other Monday Night programming.

Ask Pat: tax increases

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

RA asks—

This past year the assessed value of my property has increased by $150,000. Approximately a 30% increase. Using the property tax estimator, entering a rate increase of 0% results in an increase of my tax payment of 18% due to assessed value increase alone. Therefore this more than covers the 2.67% the city proposes. I understand that many homes faced similar increases this past year. For these reasons, I am not in favor of the tax increase proposed.

Can you tell me how the city has factored in the large assessed value increases into its budget and resulting proposed tax increase?

Wow. 30% in one year is crazy. It would be nice to think you made $150K this year just sleeping in your bed, but that doesn’t do you much good if you can’t sell – you have to put that bed somewhere. However, the short answer to your question is: it hasn’t. The longer answer is below.

Your assessed increase was significantly above the average increase in property values for the City over the last year, which was 11.7%. This means you are going to get dinged by the property tax system more than most. However, that doesn’t mean the City is getting extra money, it means someone out there in New West must have got an assessment increase less than the average, and they will see a relative tax savings this year.

The better way to answer your question is by going through a quick example of how the Assessment/Mil rate tax math works.

First off, the City has not yet settled on a tax increase this year. The current draft of the 5-Year Financial Plan that needs to be done by May (the “budget”) is built around a 2.73% increase. That is (more likely than not) the number that is going to come to council in the form of a Bylaw sometime in April. This means the City plans to collect about $1.8M more this year than we did last year in order to balance the budget. About $1.3M (1.97%) of that is “base budget” increases – inflationary increases that, if not approved, would result in a reduction in existing programs and services. The other approximately $0.5M (0.76%) is new departmental requests: things like additional staff to enforce and administer the Tree Bylaw.

Using the City’s handy tax estimate calculator, you can enter 2.73% and your assessed values from 2015 and 2016, and get an idea how much your taxes are likely to rise this year. For the fun demonstrative value of it, I entered several values for property assessment increases and City tax increases, and plotted out the results:

grahp

On the Y-axis (vertical) is the property value increase from BC Assessment. I don’t think many properties went down in value, and your 30% is the highest increase I have heard of, so this should cover most of the range of residents in the City. The average increase City-wide was 11.7%, which I show with the thick grey line. On the x-axis (horizontal) is the amount your tax bill will increase based on the three scenarios represented by the green line (City tax increase of 0%), the blue line (the City’s proposed 2.73% increase) and just for comparison, a 5% tax increase shown with a red line.

You can see that for the average assessment increase (11.7%) the tax increase is equal to the City’s set increase. As your assessment increase is an astounding 30%, your tax increase is going to go up much more than this, and the relationship is linear: if we raise taxes 0%, you will pay 18.3% more, raise taxes 2.73% and you will pay 21% more, raise them by 5% you would pay 23.3% more. My assessment went up about 17%, so my numbers would be 5.3%, 8.0% and 10.3% respectively.

However, 11.7% is the average increase for the City, so for every property that increased more than 11.7% there is one that increased less than 11.7%. For the owner of a property that went up 10% in value, the proposed tax increase is about 1% (less than inflation), and any property that increased by less than 8.7% in 2016 will see their taxes go down. I know you are sitting on a 30% increase and the regional real estate numbers are crazy, but by the virtue that your property went up almost 3x the average, there must be a large number of properties in the City whose increase was less than the average, and even below that 8.7% threshold.

To sum up, the big point here is that the City does not look at the assessed property value increases when calculating the tax increase required for the year. We look at our budget and determine what our need is to deliver the services required. This year it looks like about $1.8Million, so for every $100 we took in from property taxes last year, we need to take in (about) $102.73 to deliver those services and balance the budget. If the average property assessment was 1% above last year or 100% above last year, it does not change that 2.73%, and the only thing that increases or decreases your tax burden is the amount your property increased or decreased in value relative to the city-wide average.

If you think a 30% increase is not realistic, then you are able to appeal it. Too late now for 2016, but 2017 is just around the corner. The BC Assessment office doesn’t work for the City, so we have no say in how they do their work, but there is an appeal mechanism, and if you think your out-of-scale assessment is wrong, you can appeal. If you were to get your 30% increase appealed down to 20%, you will cut in half the amount of tax increase you experience. As a City, we have no skin in that game (because every one of your neighbours’ taxes will go up slightly to offset your reduction), but as homeowner whose assessed value went up 17% last year, I’ll be sharing your pain.

Council – March 7, 2016

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The March 7, 2016 Council meeting began with the annual tradition of the May Day Draw. I’m not going to delve too deeply into this, but it was noted to me that this event was held the day before International Women’s Day, where we are asked to think about everyday examples of patriarchy in our lives.

The following items were moved on Consent by Council.

2015 Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act Report
The City is subject to the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act. We get FOI requests on a pretty common basis, for a variety of reasons. This report lists the statistics for 2015. We had 72 requests for FOI documents, released 1,041 pages of paper documents and 3,170 pages of electronic documents. One request was forwarded to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC).

Status of Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Review Process
This is an important issue for our City. Although the pipeline as proposed does not pass directly through our City, it passes very close to us, and more importantly passes right through the lower reaches of the Burnette River watershed, within metres of the River itself. After 50 years of hard work by Elmer Rudolf and the Sapperton Fish and Game Club to restore this urban water way – to bring salmon back to a river that had been devastated by a century of industrial pollution and neglect – the Brunette is too important a resource to risk. So it is important that we had representatives taking part on the NEB review process. Our consultants were there to provide solid scientific back-up, and we had Elmer help with describing the threatened habitat from a first person perspective. Our goal all along was to make sure that the protection of the Brunette is part of the decision making by the Federal government about whether, and under what conditions, this project moves forward.

This is not an Environmental Assessment the way many may think it is – it is an evaluation of the project by the National Energy Board, currently chaired by the former Deputy Minister of Oil for the Province of Alberta, with members that represent the broad range of oil and gas industry interests. The (new!) federal government last month announced an extension of the NEB review process to allow other Federal Departments to fill some gaps in First Nations Consultations and upstream GHG emissions, so we don’t expect to hear a decision from Ottawa on this project until December of 2016.

Recruitment 2016: Century House Association Representative on the
Seniors Advisory Committee
The CHA always nominates a representative to our SAC, and this report formalizes that appointment
.
900 Carnarvon Street: Housing Agreement (Bylaw No. 7810, 2016)
The building proposed for 900 Carnarvon (the “4th Tower” at Plaza 88) went through a Rezoning Public Hearing back on September 28, 2015, and Council gave the Rezoning Third Reading. One condition on this Rezoning is that the building would be a market rental building, in part to address a rental vacancy rate bouncing around 1% regionally. This housing agreement will secure that market rental condition for the life of the building (60 years). Council moved the recommendation to give this Bylaw three readings.

320 Salter Street: DVP and DP for a 91 Unit Secured Market Rental Housing Project
Move recommendation This is another project in Port Royal where we are securing market rentals. The zoning was adopted back in 2014 (before I was on Council) and we are now at the Development Permit stage. Council moved to bring this Permit to the April 4 Meeting for an Opportunity to be Heard. C’mon out and tell us what you think.

New Westminster Child and Youth Friendly Community Strategy
This is an interesting strategy the City has been working on in recent years to make sure our City has the infrastructure, programs and supports in place to be truly “family friendly”, by assuring it is a safe, supportive, and inclusive City for children and youth. There are a lot of good initiatives in here that will bolster our Family Friendly Housing Policy. I don’t have kids, but am keenly aware of transportation issues, so I am glad to see the strategy include a “Moving Domain” that addresses transportation gaps in the West End and Queensborough, safe routes to school, lowering speed limits and increased pedestrian protection in residential neighbourhoods,

Update on City Responses to Assist in Refugee Settlement and
Integration
There is a lot going on locally to support refugees that are arriving every day, including the work that social service agencies like ISS are doing (and have been doing for years before this latest crisis). Amongst other measures, the City has agreed to help organize and assist with financing of a “Newcomers Connect Day”, coming up in April.

The City is also working on updating our Newcomers guide, which includes materials to reduce barriers to local government, such as instructions on things many take for granted growing up here: what City does, where your garbage goes, when you should call police, how to get access to permits, parking, libraries, sports and recreation, etc.

235 Durham Street: HRA Amendment Bylaw No. 7817, 2016
This is an Agreement to amend a Heritage Revitalization Agreement prepared back in 2013 to extend the timeline for the restoration work, mostly due to the unexpected death of one of the parties to the agreement. Council moved to give the Bylaw which would allow the extension three readings.

Request for Support from Ladner Sediment Group
This is a group of residents and businesses in Delta who are mostly concerned that the Federal money for maintaining dredging in the Fraser River dried up under the previous government, not unlike almost every other program to support communities. Although the idea of advocating for dredging money is good for Ladner, I think that the larger dredging, flood control and diking program needs a basin-wide approach, and that is why New Westminster is active in supporting the Fraser Basin Council approach.

Additional Community Grant – Hyack Anvil Battery
The Ancient and Honourable Hyack Battery Salute is one of those quirky things about New Westminster that makes us unique. Every once in a while, we are asked to contribute a bit to help keep some of these traditions happening, and I am happy to support the renewal of uniforms for this organization. Our grants budget has a bit of unexpected room from last year, so this one-time grant is outside of cycle, but within our larger spending envelope.

2015/2016 Electrical Utility Rates
Yes, your New Westminster Power rates are going up 4%, in order to match the increase in wholesale cost for electricity in the City. A quick reminder about New Westminster Power: we pay the same rate per KW/h as other BC Hydro customers in the province, we have one of the most reliable electrical systems in the Province (notice how your lights didn’t go out during this week’s windstorm), and the Utility returns a small profit to the City coffers every year, helping to keep your taxes down. I think we have a good thing going here.

Filming Policy Amendment, Film Permit Bylaw No. 7793, 2016 and
Bylaw Notice Enforcement Amendment Bylaw 7814, 2016
We are updating our filming policy and are creating a new Bylaw to give the policy a bit of teeth. After a pretty minor edit following the last time this came tio Council, we moved to adopt the new policy and send the Bylaw for three readings.

1209 Hamilton Street: Proposed Rezoning
This duplex home just a half-block off of 12th Street is being set up to become a Day Care. It appears to be a good layout and location, but requires a rezoning. Council agreed to direct Staff to process the application as per usual, launching this plan into the entire Rezoning rigmarole. Coming to an Open House near you!

Brewery District: Rezoning Application and Master Development Permit
Amendment
This amendment to the Master Development Permit and Rezoning for the Brewery District has been back and forth between public consultation and Council for a bit, and this was one more chance for Council to comment on the changes.

Formally, the changes are to the density of the second residential building to accommodate some secured market rental, a change in density distribution (and height) to the third and fourth residential buildings, a density increase to the final phase commercial building, and a few accessory changes around land use.

I continue to be concerned about the traffic impacts here, and am happy to see that more is being done to move some access off of East Columbia. We need to shake off the idea that Brunette cannot be a used for access. I’m even happy, at this point, to see a controlled intersection installed on Brunette to further take the load off od East Columbia and discourage the use of Alberta, Kearey, and adjacent roads uphill from East Columbia from becoming commuter routes. The traffic/parking consultant for the project recommends moving access to Kearey Street, which may align well with RCH expansion plans, but a creative solution is required here as well, to prevent Kearey becoming a rat-running route. I hope Wesgroup will work with RCH to align their common approaches (and told them as much in Land Use and Planning Committee).

As much as I would love to see a Brewery at the Brewery District, I am cautious. I don’t know of another example in BC where an active brewery shares space in mixed commercial-residential development, and Breweries can be smelly and a little noisy at night. A Brew Pub or Tap house may be perfect, but an actual on-site brewery may need to be approached with caution.

École Qayqayt Elementary School Public Art Funding Request
I love this. I think this is a great use of Public Art funds. It is local, includes an educational component, is a permanent fixture, and is matched in finds with an outside partner. It is easy to say yes to this one!

The following items were Removed from the Consent Agenda for discussion:

Q2Q Pedestrian and Bicycle Bridge Review Process, Community Consultation
I feel like I have written a lot about this already, but here we go again.

I am a cyclist, a pedestrian, and have always been an advocate for sustainable active transportation, and for creating a permanent, fixed, reliable and accessible active transportation link between Queensborough and the Quayside. It is an important piece of the City’s waterfront vision, of our Master Transportation Plan, and for the development of our community in the whole.

However, this project is causing me more stress than anything else we are working on in the community today, mostly because I am very afraid we are not going to be able to build a project that is acceptable to the community.

The strong public support shown in 2013/14 consultation was for a design that we have now determined the Marine Carriers would not support – because it was low elevation, it was accessible, it had low visual intrusion and it provided reliable emergency vehicle access. One by one, we have removed those factors and are no longer building a transportation link, we are building a terribly expensive parks amenity. That would be a disaster. If we build a bridge that isn’t accessible and reliable for the ultimate users, it is going to be a lost opportunity.

So the design work continues, and the public consultation continues, but at this point I am hoping that the design consultants can pull a rabbit out of the hat, and can re-build my confidence that this project is still viable.

In the meantime, I think we need to re-engage with the Marine Carriers and the senior government agencies (Transport Canada and Port Metro Vancouver) that hold the navigable waters regulations. I respect the needs of the marine carriers and their expertise on marine operations, but the river belongs to all of us, and this community deserves and equal say in how our river is used.

I also put forward a motion to want to clarify the process for First Nations consultation. Although a pre-approval process through Port Metro Vancouver has initiated some discussions, I have learned through my participation I several Environmental Assessments over the last few years that it isn’t good enough anymore to tell First Nations what we plan to build and ask for comment. We need to engage their leadership early and make sure they are updated and aware long before formal discussion of design concepts are brought in. It is about relationship building, and I would prefer if we reach out Council to Council. This discussion should not just centre on the Q2Q, as this is an opportunity to check in and talk about the City’s Waterfront Vision in its entirety, and invite those First Nations to meet with the Council and discuss issues, concerns, and opportunities related to this bigger idea.

Ditch Infill and Urban Streetscape in Queensborough
The biggest issue in Queensborough (battling traffic and the general sense that “no one over there cares about QBoro” for that title), is how we are going to manage the remaining ditches in residential areas. The ditches are an important part of the drainage system for QBoro and Lulu Island in general, and also provide ecosystem services. Some people love the frogs and dragonflies, some hate the mosquitoes and murky water.

Filling in the ditches would require significant infrastructure costs, because an open ditch can hold and move a lot more water than a closed pipe that would easily fit in that ditch. Then you have to build curbs, gutters, storm catch basins, and connecting pipes, and in a place with no natural grades like Q’boro, you need to build grades and pumping infrastructure to keep things moving out to tidewater.

This report outlines the strategies the City will use to move towards closed drainage in the neighbourhoods where people want to go that way. Part of the cost will be on the city, some will be on developers who build new developments (and receive up-zoning benefits from that development) , and some by residents through special assessments.

We then moved on to the most exciting call-and-response part of every council meeting: Bylaws!

Film Permit Bylaw No. 7793, 2016 and Bylaw Notice Enforcement Amendment Bylaw No. 7814, 2016
As discussed above, these Bylaws regarding Film operation in the City was given three readings.

Electrical Utility Amendment Bylaw No. 7816, 2016
As discussed above, the new electrical rates bylaw was given three readings.

Housing Agreement (900 Carnarvon Street) Bylaw No. 7810, 2016
As discussed above, the Rental Agreement for Plaza 88 building 4 was given three readings.

HRA (235 Durham Street) Amendment Bylaw No. 7817, 2016
As discussed above, the Bylaw to grant this HRA extension was given three readings.

Erosion and Sediment Control Bylaw No. 7754, 2016
Bylaw Notice Enforcement Amendment Bylaw No. 7819, 2016
As discussed back on February 1, this Bylaw and the supportive changes of the Bylaw Notice Enforcement Bylaw were Adopted. It’s the law of the land, folks, please adjust your behavior accordingly.

Commercial Vehicle Amendment Bylaw No. 7777, 2016
As discussed back on February 15, this Bylaw on how we manage Taxi driver licenses was Adopted. It’s the law of the land, folks, please adjust your behavior accordingly.

HRA (205 Clinton Place) Bylaw No. 7800, 2016
Heritage Designation (205 Clinton Place ) Bylaw No. 7801, 2016
This Heritage conservation project went to Public Hearing on February 29, and the supporting Bylaws are now Adopted.

HRA (335 Buchanan Avenue) Bylaw No. 7802, 2016
Heritage Designation (335 Buchanan Avenue) Bylaw No. 7803, 2016
This Heritage conservation project also went to Public Hearing on February 29, and the supporting Bylaws are now Adopted.

And we were done!

Timelines, FalconGates, Access

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

This is a really important story that is well reported, with a timeline that tells you more in one graphic about the history of FalconGates and Translink’s alleged incompetence in rolling out the program than you will read in a year of PostMedia whinging.

From day one, this program was doomed to the embarrassing failures we are now experiencing, and TransLink knew the disaster was in the making. However, provincial interference in the operation of what they often claim to be an arms-length organization, fueled in part by a media unable (unwilling?) to understand the problem, led us down this path. Perhaps it is time those people stop pretending to be so shocked.

It is telling that a report from way back in 2005 on “controlled access” to stations starts by stating:

Over the past several years, the public and media have maintained a strong interest in implementing “controlled access” stations on SkyTrain as a potential means to deter crime and to reduce fare evasion on the rapid transit system.

Indeed, that study showed that the public perception, fueled by media reports speculation, was that 27% of people on SkyTrain pay no or insufficient fare, when the actual number was about 5%. This perception was in part linked to a measureable shift by ridership away from single tickets and faresavers towards monthly passes and U-Pass, where the “payment” action was less visible. Ironically, this shift actually resulted in a reduction in fare evasion, as people carrying monthly passes are not going to “forget” to pay for “just this one ride”, or otherwise self-justify not paying a zone change, etc. The logical response (with a defensible business case) was to step up visible enforcement and other measures to increase the perceived security of the system, including introducing expanded Transit Police service.

Back in 2005, the Smart Card model was assessed, which brought these telling and somewhat prescient quotes:

Smart Cards can also help to improve public perception of fare evasion on SkyTrain by implementing procedures such that all customers are required to “tag” their smart card upon entering a station. This will result in some level of inconvenience for pass holders, but would help to address the incorrect perception that prepaid fare holders are fare evaders.

This [Fare Gate] approach also assumes that there would be a booth or similar location at every station entrance/gate array staffed by a gate attendant. Faregate attendants would monitor gate operations, and also allow customers to bypass the gate if they had mobility impairments, excess luggage, a ticket that could not be electronically read (e.g. a promotional pass), or some other condition that prevented them from using the gate. [my emphasis]

That’s right, TransLink staff knew, and warned their Board in 2005, that there would need to be attendants on site to help people with mobility issues manage FareGates if installed. The estimate at the time was that this would require, for all the three transit lines post Canada-line introduction, 387 Full Time Equivalents.

Almost 400 staff. No wonder the business case was sketchy, and an alternate approach to improving the (I have to keep emphasizing this word) perceived security issue was to hire less than half that number of increased security staff, not the least because this would increase actual security, not just the perception of security.

The financial analysis in 2005 dollars was $32Million per year for operational and maintenance of the FareGates, extra staff, and annualized capital costs of the system, with an expected fare evasion reduction equal to about $3Million per year. Naturally, the TransLink Board said no. One would have to be insane to do it.

Enter Kevin Falcon.

In the former Minister’s defense, he was being lobbied by the Former Deputy Premier (his former boss) on behalf of the company that eventually sold TransLink what T like to call FalconGates. These are, perhaps coincidentally, the exact technology pictured on Page 23 of the 2005 Report that deemed the system uneconomic. This company, Cubic, convinced the Minister that their system was great, and would be up and running by 2010. This advice from his former Deputy was good enough for the Premier, despite TransLink continuing to reiterate that this was not going to be economical or practical to introduce.

This makes the recent questions over whether TransLink is making its own decision or is being run directly by Victoria seem rather late and academic, doesn’t it?

By the end of 2010, the defence contractor for whom the former Deputy Premier was lobbying unsurprisingly won the contract to install the FalconGates. The program had expanded somewhat to include the incredibly complex Smart Card system already discussed, and the budget expansion by 70% was neither the first nor the last time the business case got worse than hen it was first rejected. Cubic’s history of these systems was spotty (three years delay and significant usability issues in Minneapolis, two years delay and compatibility issues with the PATH SmartLink, operational and security issues in Brisbane), but these types of growing pains should not really be surprising for what is a pretty advanced and emerging technology. These examples should only have served as warning to everyone from the CAO of TransLink to Jordan Bateman that Compass and FareGate introduction was going to be a bumpy process, and there is no evidence anyone else could have done it better.

(For the purposes of this post, I am going to set aside the inside-government-lobbying-and-late-delivery model Cubic demonstrated in Sydney with the Opal Card which is at least as sad as here in British Columbia. That was military-grade bad procurement you need to read to believe).

This takes me to last Saturday afternoon when I hopped on the Skytrain and ran into a friend of mine with severe mobility restrictions (motorized chair, very limited manual dexterity). He was rather pragmatic about the situation, and recognized the FalconGate system was going to be problematic from Day 1. However, he also pointed out that there are many other accessibility issues in the system that are more problematic than requiring attendant help with Compass. To be frank, he was much more concerned about the cutting off of disabled transit pass assistance, but as cruel as that is, it’s another digression.

This chat and my work with the Access Ability Advisory Committee around our two downtown transit stations (both with significantly sub-optimal accessibility kludges), brought me to think about my experiences on other transit systems around the world. Recently, we were in one of the 20% of New York subway stations that is accessible, which I only noted because the elevator was out of order, leaving an elderly women frantic about how she was going to get home. London’s Tube is 30% accessible, Toronto’s subway about 50%, while Montreal’s Metro is less than 10% accessible. Aside from local and temporary (sometimes protracted) maintenance issues, TransLink’s light rail and heavy rail infrastructure is 100% accessible, and our bus system is reaching towards 100% accessibility.

TransLink is far from perfect when it comes to accessibility, but as an organization they have striven to reach a level of system-wide accessibility uncommon in large city transit systems. They have invested a huge amount of money in this, because it is the right thing to do. The more accessibility you install, the more potential for it to go wrong, and I hope we can do better than to hop on every snafu as if it is a massive failure of a damaged system, and recognize it as a place where improvements have, so far, fallen short.

So to take my seemingly Fletcherian mid-post thesis shift back to the original point: I wonder how much we could have improved accessibility of the system with the $200 Million we have instead pissed down the FalconGate black hole for no other reason than to make CKNW callers feel more secure that someone else is paying to ride the train they avoid while stuck in traffic.

A respectful retort

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 5 Comments.

I have received a significant amount of positive feedback on the idea of reducing urban speed limits to 30km/h. It hasn’t all been positive, a few people have given reasons why they don’t like the idea, some were even reasonable arguments, but overwhelmingly the people who have bother to contact me about it have provided support.

Then I read the letters section of the Record. I note that social media responses to the Record article were mostly supportive of the idea, but clearly letter writers do not correlate with that trend. Problem is, I’m not sure the letters in opposition to my request had much to do with what I was proposing, leading me to write this retort.

Now, there was a time that I would call a letter writer out and challenge them point-for point, or even write a reply letter dissecting the many ways the writer was wrong, hoping the Record would print it. I would use my humour and other rhetorical techniques to cast my “opponents” ideas in the least flattering light, in an effort to make my ideas (and, by association, myself) look brilliant. Tonight I had beers with a friend arguing that my Blog has lost it’s edge, because I don’t engage in that kind of argument anymore. The problem is, I’m an elected official now, and that removes both the fun from that approach, and the reasoning for it.

Mostly, this is because political rants, much like satire (separating it from other forms of comedy), really only work if the writer is “punching up”. To have a person in a decision-making role like mine dress down a non-politician who is just trying to communicate their ideas to me, is kind of a jerk move. There is an exception here for trolls, agnotologists, and other political opportunists who might bring a dressing-down upon themselves, but that is a pretty rare occasion, and it seems those people avoid me now. Instead, I find myself responding to people who actually want answers to their questions, and (usually) deserve them. So please don’t read this retort as in any way questioning the letter writer’s honest convictions or character. I’m going to try to not be a jerk, while explaining to the writer why I pretty much disagree with her on every point. Wish me luck.

“Let’s get real, Patrick. Drivers don’t care about speed limits – they ignore them now, so how will lowering speeds change that? Curb speed limits – no. Curb speeds – YES”

Well, yes and no. Obviously I care about speed limits, and you care about speed limits, so some drivers care about speed limits. Many drivers respect speed limits, some do not. A few drive like self-entitled idiots, but the majority of the others drive at a speed they self-determine to be safe, based on the speed of the traffic around them and the design of the road. We need to manage all three types differently.

Lowering limits deals with the first and the third: it reduces the average speed (because of people like you and me using the roads and being law-abiding) and it changes how we design and operate our roads. Building a road for 30km/h will feel safe at 30km/h, or (more likely, because of the way we design roads based on 85th percentiles and engineered redundancy) safe at 40km/h. If the limits are set at 50km/h we have to build the roads to be safe at 50km/h (or more likely 60km/h). So reducing the limits is not the complete solution, but it is a big help. For the smaller self-entitled idiot driving group, we need enforcement.

“Curb the voracious appetites of those who spend my precious tax dollars! Instead of wasting my tax dollars on all the rigamarole it will take to change speed limits, use those dollars to lower my taxes (and water, sewer and garbage bills)!”

That is actually my intent, even if I don’t agree with your characterization. The reason the City doesn’t just go ahead and change the speed limits in residential areas is because it would be prohibitively expensive to install the required signage to make it legally defensible, and even then, it is not clear we would be able to enforce a non-statutory limit. We also spend a lot of money in this City paying for the results of people using our residential streets as through-routes, and reducing the speed of that through-traffic both dissuades it, and reduces the cost of it.

“Get the police out there earning some of their salaries and enforce the current speed limits. Use the money all those speeding fines will yield to lower my taxes and policing costs – goodness knows policing is a gluttonous portion of the city’s expenses.”

The problem here is that the first and third clauses rely on the middle clause, and that one is based on a false premise. The City doesn’t get to keep the speeding fines it collects. Those go to the Provincial treasury where they are mixed with other “general revenue”. Some of that money is returned to Cities through a special fund, but the amount a City gets back is not increased based on how many tickets we give out, only by population.

The net result is that every time a Police officer in New Westminster writes a speeding ticket, it costs the City money. It increases your taxes and policing costs. It is not limited to the cost of having the police out there on the street writing tickets instead of doing the other things police do, but it also comes from the paper work the officers have to do when they get back to the station, the scheduling of court time (as everyone has the right to defend themselves in court), the preparation of a court case in the event of a challenge, etc.

We cannot use increased enforcement to lower taxes, and life as a Councillor would be much easier if we could! Indeed, the balancing of those costs against the need for enforcement is one of the more difficult jobs for the Police, for the Police Board, and for Council.

“Need some ideas of the best places to do that? Park zones, especially around Moody Park, where drivers fly, and put our seniors going to Century House and families going to the playgrounds, pool and the new dog park in peril. How about the fly-high ways on Stewardson and McBride? How about a school zone? A number of them are notorious for the speeding.”

While we are at it, I have my own list of places where we need more enforcement. Third Ave in front of my house (natch), or Quayside Drive, or Eighth Ave through Massey Heights, or 12th Street where the London Greenway crosses, or Derwent Way or… the list goes on, and we have a limited number of Police and a limited budget. However, we are both getting away from my original point, which is that Police enforcing a 30km/h speed limit on our residential streets will make our streets safer than police enforcing a 50km/h speed limit. And having them enforce the lower limit will be no more difficult than enforcing the higher one.

As a bonus, the lower limit will better allow us to design and build streets that keep pedestrians safe, and will improve the livability of our front yards and neighbourhoods. And that is my job.

Community – one big event

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

This last week was actually a refreshingly slow one for me. Saturday seemed like the day for many events – The Royal City Youth Soccer 50th Anniversary Party and the Queens Park Pre-School fundraiser were both on the same night, but I couldn’t attend either! This is because of the amazing lady in the middle of the photo here:

doc

I’ve known Mary Ann for a little more than a decade now. I was her teaching assistant in a memorable Structural Geology class, as she was completing her undergrad at SFU at the same time as I was doing my grad work. Turns out she was a teenager working in her Parent’s lodge in middle-of-nowhere central BC a decade earlier when she met MsNWimby, who was doing fisheries field work in the area. Small world, for people who spend time bashing around the woods of Central BC professionally. After finishing our respective degrees, Mary Ann and I worked together for an environmental consulting firm, and had many long, long days together drilling holes  and purging wells and collecting samples in places like Merritt and Port Alice. I mostly remember some fun times, but I also remember those long field days that really, really sucked. Especially at Port Alice in the winter.

Long story short, Mary Ann returned to SFU to start a Masters, which blew up into a pretty complex and crazy PhD project. As a student I remember her not liking math and struggling with 3D visualizations of complex data, but as a field partner I remember her as incredibly hardworking, detailed and stubborn. The first part is funny because her PhD ended up involving complex hydrogeological models and a whole lot of statistics, the second part apropos because she hammered away at her weaknesses and defended the hell out of her PhD last month.

So apologies to RCYS and QPPS, but I had to join the celebration of my good friend completing a huge life-defining project on Saturday night. Congratulations Dr. Middleton!

I also had a CSAP board meeting last week, went to a International Women’s Day celebration event organized by Judy Darcy and Sue Hammell, curled two games, pruned the heck out of the fig tree that was trying to eat my entire back yard, and rode an elevator:

elev

Yes, people, it is open. Elevate at will.

Council – February 29, 2016

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

As is typical on the last meeting of the month, our Leap Day meeting began with a Public Hearing on three projects, all HRAs with slightly different flavours:

Bylaws 7800 and 7801: Heritage Revitalization Agreement and Heritage Designation for 205 Clinton Place
This is a small house on the edge of Queens Park with significant heritage character/quirks. If it was being built today, we would call it “infill density” or “sensitive infill”, but instead it was built in 1912, so we call it a historic cottage. The owners want to put a full basement in the house to increase the living space beyond what is currently allowed in the zoning, and in exchange they will give the house permanent protection through a Heritage Designation.

The QPRA, the Community Heritage Commission, and the Advisory Planning Commission, all indicated support. We received no correspondence on the application, and the proponent and one neighbour spoke in favour of the project. Council referred the Bylaws and they were given third reading in the subsequent Council Meeting.

Bylaws 7802 and 7803: Heritage Revitalization Agreement and Heritage Designation for 335 Buchanan Avenue
I love this project, because it slightly pushes our idea of what a “Heritage House” looks like in New Westminster (see banner above). This small home in Upper Sapperton was built in 1937 (almost 80 years ago) in the Early Modern style. Similar to the previous project, it is a small house by modern standards, and the owners want to expand the living space in exchange for Heritage Designation.

The Community Heritage Commission and the Advisory Planning Commission indicated support, and there were no concerns brought to Council from the MSRA. We received no correspondence on the application, and only the proponent spoke in favour of the project. Council referred the Bylaws and they were given third reading in the subsequent Council Meeting.

Bylaws 7806 and 7807: Heritage Revitalization Agreement and Heritage Designation for 1407 Sixth Avenue
This project will bring back a pretty run-down heritage home in the West End, in exchange for a subdivision and the building of a relatively modest new home on the infill lot. The protected house doesn’t look like much now, but it is one of the oldest intact houses in the West End, built in 1890. The restoration plan looks to bring it back to its historic character.

The Community Heritage Commission and the Advisory Planning Commission indicated support, as did both the BOTHRA and WERA. We received no correspondence on the application. The proponent spoke in favour, and one resident of Queens Park expressed concerns about the project. Council referred the Bylaws and they were given third reading in the subsequent Council Meeting.

The Regular Meeting started with Council providing third reading of the above Bylaws. We then had an Opportunity to be Heard:

Commercial Vehicle Amendment Bylaw No. 7777, 2016
This addresses how the City manages it’s role under the provincial Motor Vehicle Act to administer chauffeur licenses, and more specifically the duties around suspension of those licenses and the appeal process.

Under the Act, our Chief Constable is responsible for issuing, suspending or cancelling chauffeur permits, and has a lot of discretion on what constitutes grounds for suspension or cancellation. The NWPD manage that discretion through a clear, written policy that outlines requirements to get a permit (age, fitness, etc.) and grounds for suspension (impaired driving convictions, assault, loss of drivers licence, etc.). This creates appropriate transparency and is a guideline for drivers (who may wish to appeal a suspension) and to City Council (who may have to hear and reply to that appeal).

Through a review and update of these policies started in 2014, including a comparison to the ways other Municipalities address this issue, several “housekeeping” changes to the City’s Commercial Vehicle Bylaw were recommended, mostly to assure it complied with the policy as updated. This new Bylaw makes the changes to that old Bylaw.

No-one came to speak to this bylaw during the Opportunity to be Heard, and later in the meeting, we gave the Bylaw third reading.

We then covered a report form staff on the Draft Financial Plan.

A draft version of the 2016-2020 Financial Plan was presented to Council. There is a period for public comment starting soon, and I recommend you have a look at the report and comment upon it. The way things look now (and this is subject to change), we are looking at about a 2.73% tax increase for 2016.

One part of the plan that interests me is the state of our reserves and our debt load. With many significant capital projects on the immediate horizon (animal shelter, Canada Games Pool, Q2Q bridge, etc.) we need to make some decisions about how to manage those costs. One of Council’s strategic goals this term is to put together a comprehensive Asset Management Plan, so that we can properly price and plan for the maintenance and replacement of our major capital assets. Our reserve fund and our potential need to borrow are intrinsically linked to this plan, and it makes no sense to do a serous review of any one without looking at all three together.

Council approved the Draft plan in principle, and staff will spend March seeking public input. Of course I am always interested in receiving comments, and have been doing some blogging on this topic. I have a few more ideas in the queue to help me (and hopefully you) put our annual budget and tax situation into better context, and hope to get those out in the next couple of weeks, including one really cool Ask Pat that arrived recently.

The following items were moved on Consent by Council:

Changes to the 2016 Schedule of Regular Council Meetings
We are continuing to hone the schedule for Council Meetings to better allot our time and Staff time on Mondays. The part you care about is that Regular Meetings will start at 6:00, with Public Delegations starting at 7:00. Adjust your Monday Night schedules accordingly.

Community Heritage Commission Appointment
We have had to appoint a replacement to the CHC, as one of the selected applicants could not serve.

School Board Appointments
Several of our advisory committees have representatives from the School Board, selected by the School Board, and we are happy to have their help. Although our jurisdictions are separate, there are many things in the City (like transportation around school sites and the future of the Massey Theatre) that require Council and the School Board to work together and be on the same page. We are happy to have their support!

QPRA Representative on the Neighbourhood Traffic Advisory Committee
Every Residents’ Association has a representative on the NTAC, and this appointment s just to approve the Rep recommended by the Queens Park Residents Association.

Fraser Health Representatives to the Community and Social Issues Committee
We are lucky to have representatives from Fraser Health helping with this committee. They recommend ‘em, we appoint ‘em.

We then moved through a few BYLAWS

Commercial Vehicle Amendment Bylaw No. 7777, 2016
As discussed above, this Bylaw was given Third Reading.

Amendment to Delegation Bylaw No. 7820, 2016
As discussed on the February 15 Meeting of Council, this Bylaw was formally adopted. It’s now the Law of the Land, please adjust your behaviour accordingly.

Housing Agreement (320 Salter Street) Bylaw No. 7805, 2016
As discussed on the February 15 Meeting of Council, this Bylaw was formally adopted. It’s now the Law of the Land, please adjust your behaviour accordingly.

Then, after receiving a bit of correspondence and a few announcements, we were done for the night! But not before Councillor Harper moved to recommend Staff explore opportunities to honour Dorothy Beach, who recently died after 102 years of living in New Westminster, with more than a few of them actively fighting to protect the natural environment of the Fraser River. I suspect there may be a few opportunities arising soon…

Community (last week)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Another exciting week for the world’s most entertained City Councillor.

As you can see above, I went “All in for the Arts” at the Arts Council of New Westminster fundraiser at the Match Eatery in Queensborough. I was surrounded by Stephen O’Shea and Erin Jeffery, who are both incredibly generous with the thumbs-ups.

While fundraising, we were entertained by local analog electronic auditory waveform artist HARGOW, who also happened to perform at the Tenth (10th!) PechaKucha New West event on Saturday. This was (IMHO) the best PechaKucha yet, with stories that reflected so much that we love about community and about New West. The Mayor spoke, as did the coolest Malt Fermenter in New West. We had Renée Sarojini Saklikar stunning us with a personal poem about New Westminster history to Jen Arbo dropping the news about an exciting new venture where she hopes to see New Westminster’s future written.1

I had a Youth Advisory Committee to meet with (which made me feel every bit of my 46 years old), and attended a tour of a recently-built pool in an unnamed nearby community as part of my duties on the Canada Games Pool Planning Taskforce. We are deep into information gathering here, and hope to have some exciting news this spring.

6

I made a quick appearance at the well-attended VIBE event at the Anvil to try my hand at blackout poetry, but had to run to my curling game before the choir performance, which was disappointing, as I really love complaints.

Speaking of complaints, I went down to Front Street on Saturday to talk to a couple of the business owners. With the Parkade removal moving along fast, there have been a few minor glitches, but the City and the BIA are doing a lot of work to help the businesses down there keep operating, and to keep people knowing that you can’t drive your truck on Front Street, but you can still get down there and buy some wine or some coffee. Different business owners are having different experiences, but almost every one I talked to is really looking forward to letting the sun shine on their storefront for the first time in 50 years.

3

Everyone’s favorite brewery had a Founders Club celebration this week, the RCFM had their Annual General Meeting (exciting changes in 2015, lots of great new ideas for 2016!), and the Vancouver Foundation held their Neighbourhood Small Grants celebration for New Westminster at Century House.

If you don’t know about the Neighbourhood Small Grants, you should look them up. This is a great program where the Vancouver Foundation provides grants to a variety of small events, ideas, or programs in the region. They are easy to apply for, and granted every year, to help you run a block party, hold a community dance, start a sewing circle, or an art project where people put on a Fez and sit on a Chaise.2

So there is that.

More taxes – with colour!

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

My main argument last post was that New Westminster’s property taxes, on a per capita basis, are not out of line with the rest of the region, and are actually significantly enough below the average that the difference works out to a pretty nice chunk of money.

However, it was noted to me that we don’t actually pay property taxes on a per-capita basis, we pay per household. So I took the same sets of statistics from the BC Government site to see how much each City was collecting in taxes from Residential properties only (not business or industry), and compared it to the number of Households in each community, which is a statistic collected by Metro Vancouver for their own purposes.

table1crop
Total residential taxes collected by Municipality per Household (BC Gov’t and Metro Vancouver data)

As you can see in this colourful chart, New Westminster slips down into one of the lowest-taxed communities in the Lower Mainland in this comparison. We have a relatively low number of residents per household (2.28, compared to a regional average of 2.73) likely because of the larger number of rental suites and apartments in New Westminster than other Municipalities.

Although the presence of taxes irritates some people, the issue really arises whenever taxes are raised, so how do we measure up in the constantly-increasing-taxes department? Every year Council discusses a potential tax increase to keep up with inflation, growth, wage increases and paying for new programs. Again, the Province’s annual reporting is a useful dataset for comparing these increases between Municipalities, in this case the table called Schedule 703, which lists the annual “Total Property Taxes and Charges” for all Municipalities. I calculated the % increase every year for all 21 Municipalities, and to facilitate comparison between Belcarra’s $2M budget and Vancouver’s $1.4B budget, I indexed all of the taxes to the 2005 baseline, which I arbitrarily set at $100.

table 2
Taxes and fees collected by Municipalities, 2005 to 2015, as a percentage of the baseline amount collected in 2005.

As you can see, between 2005 and 2015, New Westminster’s taxes went up about 65%, which puts us right about the middle of the pack regionally. Anmore was off the scale in their increases, and Vancouver was (perhaps surprisingly to some) one of the most conservative in their tax hikes. To answer your question, I have no idea why Langley Township has that big jog in 2014, except to say that’s what the stats report, and it was an election year in Jordan Bateman’s riding!

These numbers, however, mask that over those 10 years, there was a lot of regional population growth, so as taxes went up, so did the number of taxpayers. Your individual tax increase as a resident of one of these Cities is not represented here, so I took data from Schedule 201 to track the rate of population growth with the same set-2005-as-100 indexing, and the same line colours:

table 3crop
Municipal population, as a percentage of the 2005 baseline population.

The data here is, unfortunately, a little choppy, as the BC Government does estimates between census years, and the 2014 Census leaves something to be desired. Why they reported no changes in population in 2013 or 2015, you will have to ask them. Perhaps most surprising are the 6 Municipalities that saw their population shrink since 2005 (we need to sit down and talk about the Regional Growth Strategy here, folks). As you can see, New Westminster was one of the fastest-growing communities, behind Surrey and Port Moody, and quite a bit faster than all of the municipalities to the north and west of us, even those with similar dense urban cores and rapid transit access.

So combining those two charts together, I calculated the “Total Property Taxes and Charges” (from Schedule 703) and divided by population (from Schedule 201), then again indexed the resultant taxes per capita to the 2005 rate, which I arbitrarily set at 100:

Taxes and fees per capita, as a percentage of the 2005 value.
Taxes and fees per capita, as a percentage of the 2005 value.

Not surprisingly, taxes didn’t go down per capita in any Municipality over the last decade, but Vancouver’s rapid growth combined with its relatively conservative tax increases make them look pretty good, and they were the only Municipality whose tax increases were (at least until 2014) on pace with the National Inflation Rate, which I added as a dashed line, mostly for Ed’s benefit. Notably, only 4 municipalities (Vancouver, North Vancouver City, Langley City and Surrey) have increased their taxes at a lower rate than New Westminster. It is interesting that these are amongst the most “urbanized” municipalities, and that taxes are increasing fastest in more rural/suburban municipalities, a correlation I have no theories to explain.

As a summary, New Westminster is far from the most-taxed municipality, and are trending towards being one of the lowest-taxed. Based on BC Government data, I am confident that our taxes, no matter how you count them, are comparatively low, and our increases to date are low relative to the other municipalities in the Lower Mainland.

Tax time again

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

As it is budget time again at New Westminster Council, people will soon be asked to provide some feedback to our somewhat byzantine financial planning.

The feedback the City receives during tax time can usually be summed up in one phrase: Stop raising taxes. Unfortunately, that advice usually offers a paucity of practical suggestions of how to save the money, with the exception of a general idea that we need to fire some number of “gold-plated staff”. For every suggestion of a practical way to save money (“stop wasting money on flowers”), there are other suggestions or how poorly we prioritize our spending (“what happened to the flowers that used to be on the boardwalk?”)

This is an area where the City’s public engagement process could definitely be improved, but it may be the most challenging part of community engagement, because there are a variety of barriers between making municipal financing understandable to most people, while still providing a complete enough picture of how our budgeting works and where our your money actually goes. The City’s books are, by regulation and practice, completely open, but that doesn’t mean the data presented is put into a context that is useful for most people. This is augmented with a general lack of understanding of how municipal financing works, including the Public Service Accounting Standards, auditing, and formal reporting that is done by every City in the Province.

So to start the conversation here about the 2016 budget plan, I want to put to rest, once again, one of the myths we commonly here in New Westminster: that we are “The Highest Taxed City” in the Lower Mainland. To challenge that idea, I am once again going to the standardized financial reporting data that every City provides to the Province.

I have already talked about Mil Rates, and not much has changed since I wrote that blog post all them years ago – Mil rates are still a terrible way to compare taxes between Cities. Actually, pretty much any way to try to compare taxes between Cities is a terrible way. Every comparison includes some confounding variables hidden in the data, because (back to the top) municipal budgeting and taxes are a complicated topic.

So for the purposes of this post, I will provide a couple of charts showing that we are not, as some would assert, the highest-taxed City in the Lower Mainland. Again, all data from the BC Government sources cited above, which is about the most impartial source of data available for local government finances.

Table1
Residential property taxes collected in 2015 per capita.

Table 1 shows the amount of residential property tax paid to the Municipality per person who lives in the Municipality. This does not include taxes paid by industry or businesses, or other fees the City collects, but right off the top, you can see that New Westminster is no-where near the most taxed Municipality.

But this is only Residential Property taxes, and Cities vary somewhat in the amount of industrial and commercial taxes they collect relative to residential taxes.

Table2

As a bit of an aside, Table 2 shows how much of the taxation burden is carried by residential homeowners, relative to how much of the present assessed land value is residential. In every City (except those few lacking commercial or industrial taxpayers), the business community subsidizes the homeowners. The few Munis with almost all of their revenue collected from residential land are the anomalies, but the “gap” between tax burden and assessed land value here in New Westminster (~25%) is not out of line with that of our “competition” with similar tax rates.

Table3
All municipal taxes collected in 2015 per capita.

If we widen our focus away from only taxes collected from residential property owners, and put all municipal taxes (residential, commercial, industrial, etc.) into the bin, we end up with Table 3, the amount of municipal taxes collected from all sources per capita. Again, New Westminster is somewhere in the middle, skewing slightly (but probably not significantly) towards the lower-tax side of the spectrum. The Cities that moved up are (naturally) those with the largest commercial and industrial land bases. Vancouver moved up 11 places from one of the lowest-tax cities to 5th from the top, Delta from the middle of the pack to the second highest (thanks to their low population and the Annacis Island cash cow), while residential bedroom communities like Anmore, Lions Bay and (sorry) Maple Ridge move way down to where they look more like comparatively lower-tax communities.

However, there is one more way these comparisons of taxes are not fair between jurisdictions, and that is in the other ways some municipalities choose to collect money from residents and businesses. Fees, Local Area Service Taxes, and Parcel Taxes are ways that tax burden can be kept off the “Mil rate”, but still appear on your bill. These are, fortunately, reported to the Province, which allows a more fair comparison between the Cities (Surrey, Burnaby, Coquitlam) that collect millions in Parcel Taxes with others (Vancouver, Richmond, New Westminster) that collect none.

Table4

Table 4 shows what happens if these additional taxes are included with your variable property taxes, and the Cities are compared, again on a per-capita basis. Not only does New Westminster compare well against out neighbours, we are significantly below the average per-capita taxes for the region, shown by the dashed red line.

For the fun of it, I calculated what it would mean for New Westminster to raise its taxes to match the per-capita regional rate. To get there, we would have to collect $18.5 Million more every year, or $264 per resident. To put that in perspective, an extra $18.5 Million per year would pay outright for a new Canada Games Pool in 3 or 4 years, a new Animal Care Facility in less than 6 months, or enough money to raise our annual grant fund for festivals and other services by 20 times. That is a crazy amount of money, and that is the amount we are below the average for the region.

Do all cities charge too much taxes? Some would argue that, while other question whether cutting municipal costs to the bone is really worth the erosion of livability that usually results. And threading that needle, my friends, is where we need to have a better discussion around the City’s budget.